11/18/20
For whoever heard this scream into the void.
Thanks for listening.

• • •

Anyone else ever feel like screaming?
Just clenching your fists,
leaning in on yourself,
and screaming.

All for no particular reason.

Maybe just the culmination of it all.
Maybe just built up frustration.
Maybe repressed anger.
Sleep deprivation?

I think the reason I just felt like
screaming till my voice gives out,
is down to two of my perpetual enemies.

Yearning and. . . frustration?
no. . . impatience?
discontentment? no definitely not.

I don't know. It's yearning and some completely ineffable emotion.

My fucking downfall
will because of these two emotions,
I swear to the universe itself.

And the thing is it's the pairing that
makes me want to scream.

The constant yearning for things the world won't let me have till I'm 'older.'

And this persistent and consistent chaos,
between something like euphoria,
and a tight emptiness.

If there's a feeling to describe inconsistent yet extreme, contented and obsessive joy,
and a perpetual, underlying, discontented empty tightness.

That's it, that's what this ineffable emotion or state, or whatever feels like. If you add a insatiable yearning that's what my existence feels like.

There's a word for this yearning at least, Sehnsucht.

I wish I could find the word for the ineffable feeling, I know it exists. I know there's a word for it, there's a word for almost every feeling.

I just don't know the word for this extreme dichotomy.

Fuck. Why is my existence so emotionally extreme? Why is moments of 'okay' and 'fine' only seem to be used to transition into euphoria or absolute anguish?

I love my extreme.
I love it, but it kills me.
Has been for sometime. . . I think.

Well, okay, that's a development.
Let's move on?
To the yearning?
Yes, onto the yearning.

Sehnsucht, is a German word that means something along the lines of an inconsolable yearning or wistful longing for something one cannot explain or does not know.

That's as close as it's going to get to capturing this feeling of yearning in a word.

. . .but even that isn't doing it justice.

This is the kind of yearning
that you sometimes think you
know the cause for,
only to realize it's so much more,
that it runs much deeper.

It's the kind of yearning
that keeps you up at night.
Tossing and turning
as if you can physically displace
it from your brain.
Only to give up and
let your tears try for the nth time
to fill this bottomless hole in your chest
that wishes to be filled by something
it either cannot name,
or does not have the strength to.

It's the kind of yearning
I can't even find poetry to describe it.
Not even in Poetry!
It's like the feeling itself has gotten so used to being unable to find it's cause,
it set out in vengeance.
Ridding even poets of the words
to describe it's depth and emptiness
in its complete totality.
Leaving those of us who survive on language, that when arranged in it's perfect chaos,
gives us our only true solace.

Yearning is cruel.
Any poet, or passerby
who describes it
as anything other than
unbearable has yet
to truly experience it.

I've given yearning all the words I can manage before it swallows them as well,
so let's move on.

To the ineffable?
Of course, where else is there to go?

The ineffable—or the unnamed extreme emotionally dichotomy as described earlier—is even harder to describe than the yearning.

It has no word to even start with,
all it has the kind word ineffable
to give it some sort of raggedy
shelter from reality.

So we'll be forced to take advantage of ineffable's hospitality,
and use it in place of our wordless emotion.

We'll start by skipping over the non-existent definition, and I'll try to vainly capture the physicality of this feeling.

As I have previously described it,
it's some inconsistent yet extreme,
contented and obsessive joy,
and a perpetual, underlying,
discontented empty tightness.

Dear Universe, it takes ten adjectives just to scratch the brink of it!

It's this content, obsession spurred, pure to the point of superficiality, kind of happiness.

But that's not the end of it.

It feels like an epiphany that lasts far too long,
like you're coming down from cloud nine and only have just started to realize it was actually hell?

Because it's everything I just described above and the sudden addition of an
inextricably empty and clenching,
perpetual realization of some
deeply chaotic, discontented reality.

A reality you realize you inhabit while simultaneously experiencing a absolutely content, almost superficially pure, euphoria.

It's as if I was fractured
over the border of heaven and hell,
and I exist in both in a separate and yet singular existence.

It's more than confusing. It's disorienting.
It's breaks the very foundation of
who you thought you are, and what you feel.

And that's my constant existence.

I'll just be living, trying to get through the day. Like anybody else.

Wake up,
go to work,
come home,
then sleep,
kind of day.

And I'll have period of being okay or fine.

Then period of content, almost superficially pure, euphoria.

Then the emptiness starts to set in its subtle way of making you feel it's always been there.

Then all of sudden, it's like the very foundation of what you thought was reality is swept out from under me and this chaotic and discontented reality is revealed.

Like any happiness I experience
is just the figment of my imagination.
Like it wasn't even really there.

It's like I'm not allowed to experience one or the other, no, they have to gang up on me.

My days are normal.
Regular life, work or school or lazy weekends.

And I'll be fine, okay, just existing.

Sure, I'll feel things throughout the day,
happy, sad, nervous. Some days this normal is all I get, I somehow manage to avoid the yearning and ineffable.

But those days, with those feelings, are not nearly as intense as the yearning or the ineffable days.

So I'll be fine at work or whatever.

Then I'll get home and it's like my brain decides like there couldn't be any more euphoric activity than reading in my bed.

I'll get my content, almost superficially pure, euphoria for maybe a hour or two.

Then I'll look up and feel like I'm filled with nothing but air, like I'm so empty there's hardly anything to me at all.

Then it's like the walls of my room are covered with signs saying it was all fake, it was never real. That the real world is actually full of discontented chaos, not pure euphoria.

And I'll lay there until I've thought myself back to actual reality, where those are just feelings I get to control and push away, and then I get to go back to reading my book in my bed.

Then I get ready to sleep, and I lay back down and it's like someone stole the very thing that motivates my very existence.

Like someone's holding my dreams, and my friends, and my loves, my very future in front of me, and dear Universe I want it.

. . . but I can't have it.
No, I can only want it.

All I know is that I'm missing.
What? I'm not really sure, but it's gone.
And I need it.

And then I'll fall asleep.

And yes, I hear you.
How did I get here from talking about the urge to scream?

Well, this is why I felt like fucking screaming.

Because I have two persistent demons,
and they decided to pay me a visit.

And I was so done.
I was so done with this bullshit.

Yearning and the Ineffable can leave.
They can go. I don't need them.

I'll scream all day or write till my hands bleed
if I have to, anything to make them leave.

So Universe, or whoever the hell is reading this, I need some help here.
Something, frankly anything,
anything that will stop the
Yearning and the Ineffable
from ruining my days.

I'm open to suggestions.

Screaming,
Eliza